Cross - High cross, Eoghanacht, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Crosses & Monuments
Most high crosses stand upright, doing what they were made to do.
This one lies flat. Known as the South Cross, it survives as eight fragments that have been cemented together and laid horizontally on a modern concrete plinth, a posture that gives it the slightly disconcerting look of a patient on a table. What was once a limestone cross standing at least 1.95 metres tall, with a ringed head and carved surfaces, now exists in a kind of suspended reconstruction, preserved but fundamentally altered from its original form.
The cross stands within a leacht, a low cairn or mounded structure traditionally associated with prayer and commemoration, about 80 metres south of Teampall Bhreacáin, one of the cluster of early medieval churches known collectively as Na Seacht Teampaill, the Seven Churches, on Inis Mór in the Aran Islands. The site is one of the most significant early Christian complexes in the west of Ireland, and the South Cross was part of its ritual landscape. Its carved decoration, knotwork and fret patterns, is typical of insular early medieval stonework, where geometric interlace was used to fill the surface of stone monuments with a dense, ordered beauty. The cross's head is described as asymmetrical, an unusual detail that sets it apart from the more regular ringed crosses of the period and raises quiet questions about its making or its history of damage.
The fragments were noted by scholars including Westropp in 1895 and Crawford in 1907, suggesting the cross had already broken apart well before the twentieth century. The cementing and mounting on a plinth was a later intervention, a practical effort to keep the pieces together and legible, even if the result is a monument that can no longer be read as it once was. Visitors to Na Seacht Teampaill will find the cross close to the leacht, a low stony mound that itself warrants a pause, sitting quietly to the south of the main church complex.